WELCOME

Understanding the Market is a site designed to provide background and context to help readers understand what is happening in financial markets. There are many web sites that tell you what has happened today, what stocks are up and down and how today’s news and data affected stock prices and interest rates. Our goal is to provide you with a bigger picture, so that you can understand how today’s news fits in with the news of yesterday and tomorrow.

For example, the first Friday of every month, at 8:30AM ET, the Department of Labor releases the Employment report (officially, the Employment Situation Summary). Stock and bond futures react sharply, and a half dozen analysts will appear on CNBC and elsewhere to explain what the number really means. But what exactly is the employment report; why is it so important? For some context you can read this article. Similarly, every day a number of analysts argue about whether the US is in a recession; to understand what a recession is, who actually decides whether the US is in a recession and to see the latest data that they are looking at, read this article.

There is more information about the principal author of this site (Coleman S. Kendall) here and about his company that provides consulting services to financial institutions and contact me at ckendall (at) umrkt (dot) com.

There is also an Italian version of this site; I have traveled to Italy for 30 years, and have worked with clients there for 20 years. All articles on this site will also appear on the Italian site (translated and adapted by native speakers).